Smoked Out (Digger) (11 page)

"He’s all right."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Go ahead."

"You really know him? Like well?"

"Really well." Her voice was a touch suspicious, and Digger quickly said, "No, you don’t. Not really well."

"I do."

"Well enough to talk to? To go to that bar we just left with and talk to?"

"That well. Many times," she said. "Marty just asked me about him."

"I want to know, did he get a face lift?"

"No. Why?"

"I don’t know. When I heard about the death, I read an obituary in the paper. It said he was forty-five, but he doesn’t look any forty-five. I thought maybe he did something funny with his face."

"He didn’t have to. It’s easy to stay young if you take care of yourself," Sonje said.

"That’s his secret?"

"Yes. Don’t work too hard. Play a lot. Spend a lot of money. Enjoy yourself."

"He ought to bottle the formula. I’d buy some."

"You’ve got more money than he has. With that, all the rest is easy," Sonje said.

"I don’t know. Big Hollywood doctor. Don’t tell me he’s starving."

"No, he’s not starving. I don’t think so. But he sold the
Seraglio
."

"What’s the
Seraglio?
"

"His boat."

"When’d he sell it? Is it still around? My kid brother’s looking for a boat."

"I don’t know. Four, five months ago. Kind of in a hurry. He didn’t even mention it to me. One day he just sold it. He hasn’t been around much since."

"Ever meet Jessalyn?"

"I saw her once at the yacht club, but, of course, we didn’t talk."

"Of course," Digger said. "She was a nice woman. We went to Burroughs private school together. Our families had neighboring estates in Connecticut. It’s a shame she got sick."

"Sick? She died off a cliff, didn’t she?"

"Yes. But she was sick before that," Digger said.

"Oh. I didn’t know that. Too bad. Yes, too bad."

"Her mother told me about it. Fainting spells. Maybe that caused the accident," he said.

Sonje shrugged. "I guess it might have," she said.

After dinner, they had another drink at their table and then, as if by prearrangement, they left to go to Digger’s motel room.

Digger poured them each a glass of vodka and then went into the bathroom. He stripped off the tape recorder and adhesive tape and microphone and wrapped them in a towel. When he walked out of the bathroom, he quickly stuffed the towel into the top of his clothes closet.

Sonje was lying on the bed, pillows propped up behind her head. She was holding her vodka glass in her hand. She was naked.

"Welcome to California," she said.

Digger sat on the edge of the bed next to her. "It’s nice to know the natives are friendly."

He took the glass from her hand and put it on the end table next to his. She helped him off with his clothes, making a game of it, taking each garment and tossing it over the bed and onto the floor. When he was naked, she pulled him down on top of her with surprisingly strong arms. He reached a hand out for the lamp switch, but she caught his hand in hers.

"Leave it on," she said. "I want to see your face when I fuck you."

She was good, very good, with the kind of talent that comes, not from natural ability, but from many years on the practice field. Her legs were over his shoulders, around his waist, between his legs. Her heels tickled the backs of his knees.

Her tongue was in his mouth, in his ears, licking his neck. Her fingers probed and roamed his entire body. He wondered if she followed a set pattern for the movements or if she varied them each time. If they made it again, would she do the same things in the same order? He wanted to ask her. He decided he was going crazy. The booze was softening his brain. He no longer could give anyone a straight answer. He used so many aliases that he sometimes had trouble remembering his real name. His mother had always said he’d wind up no good. Jewish mothers always said their sons would wind up no good. At least, they said that to their sons. His mother, though, might turn out to be right. Julian Burroughs was getting whackier and whackier.

He tried not to, but he wasn’t able to avoid comparing Sonje with Koko. Koko was gentle in her lovemaking, never straining, never forcing. If it touched her right, there was wildness, but there were other times when she just purred from pleasure.

The thought came that he was trying to suppress. That was how Koko made love to him. But how did she make it to other men, to the high-rollers she escorted around Las Vegas for the company? With them, was she like this woman beneath him was with Digger? A professional, working hard to give a dollar’s value for a dollar spent?

He didn’t want to think about it anymore and he was glad when she started making preorgasmic sounds.

"I’m coming," she whispered to him.

"Go ahead. Don’t hold back. Let it happen naturally," he said. Did she know he was talking nonsense? She bit her lip. He realized he had never seen a woman bite her lip who wasn’t faking an emotion. People who were really emotional didn’t bite their lips; they might just bite the damn things off. He wanted to tell her that it was the only thing she had done wrong, the only sour note she had hit in an otherwise virtuoso performance.

It probably wouldn’t have been the smart thing to do. She was bucking and writhing and groaning and moaning and finally she let out a gasp and her body spasmed, then went limp under him. Because he didn’t want to have to go through that again, he released himself, surprised as always at how good it felt.

He let his weight collapse onto her body, lay there a minute, then rolled off her onto the bed. He had forgotten to check the desk to see if he had received any messages. He would check them as soon as he got rid of Sonje.

She was saying something, but he couldn’t recognize what it was. Then he remembered. She was saying, "Tom, Tom, Tom." That was his name. Thomas Lipton, master yachtsman. He turned to her, and she smiled and said, "Kiss me."

He did, then slid away from her arms as she tried to encircle him and pull him down to her. He retrieved their vodka glasses from the end table and handed her the one with lipstick stains. He knew he was supposed to say something. But what? Could he give her stars, like a review? Three-and-a-half stars out of a possible four. If she hadn’t bitten her lip, definitely four stars. He couldn’t give her stars.

He said, "Wow. Golly gee."

She had been looking at him questioningly, but when he spoke, she smiled, relaxed and squirmed upward in bed so she could sip at her drink. And then she napped. They always napped afterwards. He hated it when they napped. They should just go home when they were done.

He should have let her follow him in her own car, he thought, because he had to drive her back to the yacht club where she was parked and then follow her home to make sure she got home safely.

She apologized for "having to run."

"You know, I’ve got to go to work in the morning. Rent doesn’t pay itself."

He gave the expected response. "Maybe someday soon we’ll take care of that."

She kissed him good night, grinding her body against his in the shadows near the front door of her small garden-apartment building. After she was inside, he wrote the address down inside a match-book in case he had to look up Sonje Bjorkland again.

There were no parking spaces in front of the Sportsland Lodge, so Digger had to pull into the large parking lot at the far end of the building. The car that pulled into the driveway behind him double-parked in front of the building.

Digger was walking back toward the main entrance, abreast of the double-parked car, when he sensed people coming at him. He wheeled, and his head was grazed by a roundhouse right thrown at him by one of the two men who had run toward him from the double-parked car.

Digger felt hard knuckles bruise his temple, but he instinctively ducked away from the punch, bent low, then came up with a straight, short right-hand that he buried into the man’s stomach.

"Ooooof," the man grunted.

Before Digger could turn from him, he was punched in the side by the second man. Digger fell back toward the wall of the building, moving through the low bushes. He shook off the pain. With the wall at his back, he’d be able to see how many were attacking him and where they were coming from. There were two.

Both men lunged toward him. Digger took a punch in the chest that knocked the air from his lungs, but he managed to bring his knee up and bury it into the solar plexus of one of the goons.

As he brought his leg down, he wheeled and put his left elbow across the chin of the other man. Both slowed for a moment, backed off, then were on him again. They rained punches on him. He felt them in his chest, his shoulders, bouncing off his head. He hunched his body over, almost into the shape of a question mark, so that his shoulders protected his jaw and his chest protected his stomach. He lashed out with elbows and fists and knees. He struck a lot, even as he told himself the two men would win. One of them would get lucky and Digger would go down. Once on the ground, he was a piece of meat.

"Wise ass, Burroughs," one of the men grunted. Digger punched him in the face for his pains.

But he took a shot to the temple that crossed his eyes and blurred his vision. He shook his head to try to clear it.

Then he heard the scream. A woman’s scream.

"Stop," the voice screamed." "Leave that man alone. Help. Police. Stop. Leave that man alone. He’s got an electric liver."

He heard footsteps running toward him and then there were no more punches. He heard two car doors slam and a motor roar and a car speed away with the screech of tortured tires.

And Lorelei Church was in front of him.

"Tim. Tim. Are you all right?" she asked.

"I don’t know," Digger said. He came up out of his crouch. He could stand without unreasonable pain. He felt his face, then his chest and stomach. Nothing was broken. He breathed deeply. His ribs weren’t fractured.

He touched his face.

"You’re not bleeding," Lorelei said.

"Thank you."

"Is your pacemaker all right? Is there something I should do?"

"I’m not wearing it tonight." Digger looked around. The car was long gone. "How’d you get here anyway?"

"I came to talk to you but you weren’t in. I thought I’d wait. I was sitting in my car when I saw you and those two men."

"You ever see them before?"

"No."

"Let’s go inside," Digger said.

As they approached the entrance door, the desk clerk came out.

"Anything going on here?" he said.

"No," Digger said. "Go back to sleep."

In his room, Lorelei poured him a glass of vodka while he went into the bathroom to check himself. His face was puffed and bruised, but he wasn’t cut. His body ached from the pounding, but he had taken worse and lived. He would be all right. Outside, he checked the closet to make sure his tape recorder was still wrapped safely inside the towel. It was.

Lorelei handed him the drink.

"What’d you want to talk about?" Digger said as he sank into the chair. Lorelei sat on the couch facing him. For the first time, he noticed that she looked nervous and ill at ease. "What’s wrong?" he asked.

"I got fired tonight."

"By Welles?"

Lorelei nodded. "He came into the store just around closing time. He wanted to know if somebody that sounded like you but was named Burroughs or something had been nosing around the store. I told him no, Tim. And then he fired me, just like that."

"No explanation?"

"He said he was closing the store. I guess he doesn’t need me working there if he’s closing the store."

"Guess not."

"Now what am I going to do?" she asked.

"You’ll find something."

"I’d better and pretty soon."

Digger felt sorry for her. There had to be jobs in a big office like BSLI’s Los Angeles branch. "I know some people around here," he said. "I’ll see what I can do."

"Thank you, Tim. Who were those men tonight?"

"I don’t know."

"Why were they beating on you?"

"I don’t know. Muggers, maybe. Maybe I look rich."

"You don’t look rich, you look tired. Do you take vitamins every day?"

"Most days."

"Do it every day," she said. "You ought to go to bed. You want me to stay and go to bed with you?"

"Not tonight, Lorelei."

"All right. I’m going home, then. If you hear anything, call me. I’m in the book."

"Okay." Even though it hurt him to move, Digger walked outside with the girl and made sure she was safely in her car. Before she drove away, he leaned through her window and kissed her. "Thanks," he said. "Maybe you saved my life."

"I wish I had my police whistle," she said. "I usually carry my whistle, but I left it on my dumb dresser tonight. If I had it, I would have blown it and scared the pants off them."

"I bet you would have," he said. "You did all right without it."

Back in the lodge, Digger stopped at the desk and asked for messages from the clerk, who had seen him tonight with two beautiful women and now looked at him with new respect. There were two messages and a large Manila envelope with P.B. initialed in the upper left corner. Walking back down the corridor toward the elevator to his room, Digger glanced inside the envelope. There was a thick sheaf of clippings from the local papers about Dr. and Mrs. Welles. Apparently Lt. Breslin’s orgy had gone well; his girl reporter had looted her paper’s files.

He glanced at the two messages.

Walter Brackler must have gotten a call from Sylvan Grove Cemetery in answer to his query about a pink mausoleum with wine cellar and hot tub. His message said, "Very funny, Burroughs. I may buy one and give it to you. I hope you can use it. Soon."

The other message was from Koko. "Call me. Important," it read.

She was home.

"Digger, are you all right?"

"Yeah. I’m okay. Why?"

"There was a guy here tonight checking on my car. I wasn’t here, but he talked to that dumb bastard who works downstairs at the desk. He opened his heart and soul to him."